Our International Student Ambassadors will tell you! They share their own stories of transitioning, studying, living, and achieving as international students at the University of Minnesota. Through their experiences, you can start to imagine your life studying at our prestigious university.

My "first time" experiences

Hello People! I'd like to share my "first time" experiences after I came to University of Minnesota.
For some people, it may be a small thing, but it was a definitely new eye-opening experiences for me!

1. New food

I LOVED TRYING NEW FOOD. For example, Pho is Vietnamese rice noodle. Although I saw many rice-noodle places in South Korea, I've never tried before I came to Minnesota. When I was in Korea, I was very conservative about the culture food and trying new food. However, after I came here -and also, I was sick and tired of dorm food- I started trying new type of foods. Now, Pho is one of my favorite foods!

2. Using a dryer for my laundry

Ok, I should be honest about this. My mother did most of laundries when I was in Korea and she hanged the clothes to dry them. However, if you do the same thing in Minnesota, your clothes will either be all frozen or take forever to dry. I used "dryer machine" for the laundry and I loved how it dries so perfectly. However, you should be careful because it will make your clothes shrink.

3. Waving to the professors and Gaze people in their eyes.

This is one thing I really struggled. In Korea, we bow to the people when...
1. The person is older than you. 2. The person has socially higher rank than you. 3. First time you meet the person 4. Or, whoever you respect.
So, it was very hard for me to just waive at my professors (and I was even asked to call their first name!)

Also, I was from the culture that "looking straight in the eyes can be considered as a rude behavior" However, people in here think that is the right way of communication. If you keep on looking at somewhere else, they think you are distracted rather than having a conversation. It took me for a while to learn how to look into other people's eyes. (It was so awkward!!)